Adventures of the Desert Wings

Well before I begin on where I am now I think I should review where I have been over the last year. It's been a wild and crazy adventure - I would even say life changing. I have learned so much about myself and my profession over the last year. Some lessons I am just now starting to appreciate.... Others are sweet memories.

It all began last May... I went to a professional critical care nurses conference in Washington, D.C. I was broke at the time and decided to stay in a hostel to save $. Surviving and enjoying the hostel gave me the courage I needed to try travel nursing. It took almost 2 months to get a travel assignment, but fate would have it that I was going to travel back to Washington, D.C. Little did I know that I was in for a rude awakening. Take small town Idaho girl and throw her into a 900-bed hospital in the middle of the ghetto and watch her pucker. Crazy, busy, intense, survival of the fittest or insane are all words I would use to describe my experience there. It made me appreciate what I had back in Salt Lake City.

However, I did love DC. I loved to play on U street at Patty Boom Booms. Please go there if you are ever in the city, and make sure to order a spicy beef patty with the spicy mango sauce - yummy! I did not enjoy getting hit by cars on my bike.

My contract in DC ended and I was so lucky to be able to then go to Vail, Colorado for the winter. This was heaven for me. I love the mountains, the snow, and the trees. I would walk out the front door of my condo and climb on the gondola to go snowboarding. This is the most snowboarding I have ever done in my life. I worked an easy job in the pre-op/pacu area of the hospital. These were very healthy patients, and a lot of them were pro athletes. The hospital asked me to stay as a full-time RN, but I was getting bored and my gypsy soul was beginning to ache for a move.....Where to next?

View from my condo

Top of Beaver Creek

Bluebird day at Vail

My roomate, Dee, and I doing the Organ Donor Race down the Minturn Mile

Back country powder day

Well, I thought Boise, Idaho would make a good home for me. Closer to my family, plenty of established friends, a place to live already arranged. It looked like the perfect move. I had 4 very good job offers on the table, but then.....

A phone call out of the blue; a job that I had applied to a year before, before I went to DC. It was for a flight company in Arizona. Anyone who knows me knows that I have wanted to be a flight RN from the moment I started working in the ICU. However, it was in Chinle, AZ (Chin-LEE). I have described it as "my dream job in the middle of hell". I had a hard time even getting google maps to find Chinle it wanted to find Chandler. One, what I thought was a bad phone interview, later they asked me to come to Chinle for an in-person interview.

I left Vail the next week, the place of mtns, trees, snow, and $$$ and the very next day I was in a completely opposite place, Chinle. Flat, except for lots of red rocks, red sand, a few scattered bushes, trailers and shacks right in the middle of the Navajo Nation. The interview went for 4 hours and then sitting inside the airplane they offered me the position. I definitely had to think about this. If I moved to Chinle I would be committing social suicide.

The decision wasn't as hard to make as I thought. By the time I had driven to SLC from Chinle I knew what I was going to do. No, not Boise, but Chinle. I spent almost a month with my parents in Idaho, hired a moving company to move my stuff from Idaho and Utah to Arizona (PS they're still not here) and now here I sit. I have no furniture, dishes, pans or anything. I have clothes, some frozen food, a pillow, and a towel. Part of my job is that they provide housing for the flight crew. So now I am trailer trash! 3 bedrooms of redneck heaven all to myself.

I had been in Chinle at my trailer all of 10 minutes when a fellow flight nurse, Kelli, jumped out of her trailer and said, “Erin, get your suit on we have a flight.” I declined, I needed to unpack but that was my introduction to Chinle. Matt is my base manager and he knocked on my door the next day and said, “Well you moving company isn’t here and you have your flight suit so why don’t you start flying today.”

My first flight I sat in the cockpit with the pilot. I strapped myself into the 5 point harness, and then the pilot reached over and cinched my straps down tight and said, “It’s going to be rough up there”. The heat rising off the desert creates some major turbulence. I did pretty well, except one drop made me grab my harness and yell “whew”! Motion sickness was a major concern for me, but I actually did really well. Let it be noted that I DID NOT PUKE! 2 flights and ambulance rides later I was feeling a bit weak in the knees but took a little walk and felt much better. I’m in love. I can say already I think I am really going to enjoy this adventure.

I was terrified that I was going to hate Chinle, but I actually really like it. Living in Chinle presents many different adventures. Such as, the nearest Wal-Mart is almost 2 hours away. There’s one grocery store in town. So you get creative and plan ahead. When we fly into towns such as Flagstaff, AZ or Albuquerque, NM we have a company van parked there and if we have time we all go shopping.

The reservation is open range and it is not unusual to see goats, sheep, horses and cows on the road, walking through the Burger King drive thru, or in front of the post office. Another common site is the natives standing on the road side. Many people do not own cars so they bum rides; others are just getting out of the drunk tank and are looking for a ride home.

Living here is actually fun. The flight crew members are all neighbors in the trailer park. I will have people knocking on my door all the time. It’s like having a built-in family. Most everyone comes and does their rotation (usually 18-20) days in a row and then head off to their real homes. Most live in various parts of Colorado. We are on call 24 hours a day, but we must time-out after 16 hours of continuous flying. On my first day I was in the air for almost 10 hours straight. I am going to get great experience here taking care of various patients.